Import RTF to Airtable

[Thomas_Bonnenfa]

Hi, I’m facing issue to import data from a RTF file into Airtable.

I tried to convert RTF to XML or CSV but I’ve got data loss (CSV) or the new document is unreadable (XML).

Does anybody already managed to do this?

Thanks

[ScottWorld]

RTF is not a structured file format, which is why no database apps allow the importing of a RTF file.

I did a quick Internet search, and found this tool — I have no idea if it will work for your RTF file or not:

https://convertio.co/rtf-csv/

[Bill_French]

ScottWorld:

RTF is not a structured file format

Actually, it is. It was Microsoft’s attempt to add structure to Word Pad documents (which were plain text). If it can be converted to CSV, that’s a sure sign that it has [some] structure. :winking_face:

Thomas_Bonnenfant1:

I tried to convert RTF to XML or CSV but I’ve got data loss (CSV) or the new document is unreadable (XML).

Welcome to the community Thomas!

At the outset, XML is readable; just not by your tools. And to be clear, RTF to CSV is a stretch - it will not likely ever work well if at all. Here’s why…

RTF is a structured document format intended to provide bold, underline, and other text formatting capabilities. CSV is a structured format as well and designed to expose tabular data in a format other systems can easily ingest. The disconnect between these two formats should be obvious - tabular data and text content are generally two very different animals.

That said, I recommend you share with the community an example of the RTF data that you want to important from that, I’m sure some clever users will be able to provide some guidance.

[ScottWorld]

It’s not structured in terms of rows & columns of data. It has no concept of record or fields.

[Bill_French]

Indeed, it’s not that it’s not structured; it’s simply a structure that is not tabular; a key distinction between documents that are typically lists vs documents that are typically not lists. :slightly_smiling_face:

But, we cannot rule out the possibility that this user possesses an RTF file of data records; hence my request for a quick look at what his underlying RTF consists of.

[Thomas_Bonnenfa]

Hello @Bill.French & @ScottWorld, thanks for your prompt answers. Actually, I’ve already tried to convert it to XML or CSV but the data is not well structured and it causes data loss (CSV) or convert into a file that is not readable (XML).

The according file is accessible here

Thanks for your help